U.S. DEPORTS MAN CONDEMNED TO DIE BY SOVIET UNION

By KENNETH B. NOBLE

Published: April 21, 1987

Thirty-six years after arriving in the United States from Germany, a Long Island man was deported last night to the Soviet Union, where he faces a death sentence as a Nazi war criminal who commanded an Estonian concentration camp in World War II and supervised the mass execution of Jews.

The man, Karl Linnas, is the first person accused of Nazi war crimes to be sent by the United States against his will to the Soviet Union. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to death in absentia in the Soviet Union in 1962.

Hours after the Supreme Court and the Justice Department rejected the final appeals in his eight-year legal battle against deportation, Mr. Linnas was taken by Federal agents from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan to Kennedy International Airport and placed aboard a Czechoslovak airliner to Prague, en route to the Soviet Union. Placed on Czechoslovak Jet

''What they are doing right now is murder and kidnapping,'' the white-bearded, 67-year-old native of Estonia shouted angrily to reporters as he was led from a car - hands cuffed under a coat draped over his arms - and into a Port Authority police office at the airport at about 5 P.M.

At 7:20 P.M., as darkness fell over the airfield, Mr. Linnas, clad in a gray suit, blue sweater and soft hat and escorted by immigration agents and police officers, was driven onto the tarmac behind the Pan American World Airways terminal, led up a ramp and placed on board a white-and-orange, four-engine Ilyushin 62-M jetliner of the Czechoslovak Airlines. Request by Daughter Fails

Even as the aircraft was taxiing out onto the runway, a final bid to prevent his deportation - a request by his daughter, Anu Linnas - was being filed with Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist at the Supreme Court. It was denied shortly before 8 P.M.

The aircraft, Flight 601, a regularly scheduled commercial flight, took off at 8:06 P.M.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Justice Department charged - and many appeals courts have agreed - that Mr. Linnas fraudulently entered the United States in 1951 and obtained citizenship in 1959 by concealing his role as commander of the Tartu concentration camp, where 12,000 people died during World War II.

Mr. Linnas told immigration officials that he had been a university student during the years 1940 to 1943, according to court papers. The United States cannot try suspects on war-crimes charges but seeks to establish that they entered the country under false pretenses.

Mr. Linnas's lawyer, Ramsey Clark, a former United States Attorney General, said last night after his client's deportation, ''We thought our Government had more courage and justice.''

When asked if members of Mr. Linnas's family planned to go to the Soviet Union to plead for Mr. Linnas's release, Mr. Clark said: ''There has been no thought of that yet. We didn't believe the issue would arise.'' 'Brought to Justice'

At the airport last night, Menachem Z. Rosensaft, an official of the World Jewish Congress, said, ''I came here tonight as a witness to see with my own eyes that we have done as much as we can to see that Linnas is brought to justice for the crimes he committed.''

Nearby, Rein Olvet, who said he was a friend of Mr. Linnas and his family, also watched the departure.

''I just wanted to see that he was treated well,'' Mr. Olvet said. ''I couldn't see his eyes that well. He just looked resigned to it.''

Mr. Linnas's plane was scheduled to arrive in Prague this morning and, after a brief stopover, Mr. Linnas was to be flown to Moscow, according to Justice Department officials. Unsuccessful Effort

The deportation of Mr. Linnas, which had become the focus of a bitter fight among members of his family, Government officials, Jewish groups and other opponents and supporters, came five days after the collapse of an effort to send him to Panama.

Mr. Linnas, who came to the United States from Germany in 1951, calling himself a displaced person, became a United States citizen in 1959 and lived quietly as a land surveyor in Greenlawn, L.I.

Yesterday, the long deportation fight ended when the Supreme Court, in a 6-to-3 decision, refused to extend an order that had blocked his forced departure. It came despite last-minute legal maneuvers by his lawyers and his family.

After the Court's action, the lawyers immediately sought a temporary restraining order from a Federal District Court judge in Washington, and then through a Federal appeals court panel. All the appeals were rejected. Officials Sharply Divided

''All he did was protect his children, his family, his mother and his father,'' said his daughter, Anu. ''He did not join forces with the Nazis and kill people.''

Mr. Linnas's longstanding deportation order had sharply divided Reagan Administration officials. Prosecutors in the Office of Special Investigations strongly urged that he be sent to the Soviet Union, citing what they called overwhelming evidence of his role in the persecution of Jews and others during World War II.

But other Administration officials, including Patrick J. Buchanan, the former White House communications director, resisted Mr. Linnas's deportation. They said the bulk of the evidence against him came from Soviet bloc countries - where Mr. Linnas and most of the war-crimes suspects are believed to have lived during the Nazi occupation - and was suspect. 'Overwhelming' Evidence

In a 1986 Federal appeals court decision upholding the deportation order, a three-judge panel said the evidence against Mr. Linnas was ''overwhelming and largely uncontroverted.''

''Linnas's duties as a concentration camp chief were such as to offend the decency of any civilized society,'' the court wrote.